LTE product development using Agile development

An extract article from On Wireless 13

LTE technology can be developed in less than 12 months with careful use of existing modules by applying ‘Agile’ techniques and using a good set of partners.

3GPP LTE is set to become the major wireless broadband global standard. It is a preferred technology due to its mix of high performance, good spectral efficiency and flat, well-structured network layer.

There is huge opportunity to reduce development time of an LTE product with careful use of Agile-like lightweight techniques. Agile methods consist of a family of development processes; some examples were formalised in the 1990s, such as Scrum, Extreme Programming and Feature-Driven Development.

In some circumstances, using Agile techniques in this way can significantly reduce timescales for development; it will not always work, for example when large multi-sited teams are used, but is certainly worth considering if the environment is suited to it.